Top pop from seventeenth-century England. Broadside ballads were single-sheet songs that sold for a penny a piece. This website concentrates on over 100 resoundingly successful examples that you can investigate through recordings, images and a wealth of other materials. Whether you are interested in music, art, love, gender, tragedy, politics, family life, crime, history, humour or death, you will find something to engage you here. See also User’s Guide.

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Showing 1 to 20 of 93

1 A proper new Ballad, intituled, The wandring Prince of Troy [Pepys 1.84-85]
2 A Memorable Song on the unhappy hunting in Chevy-Chase, between Earl/ Piercy of England, and Earl Dowglas of Scotland [Roxburghe 3.66-67]
4 A lamentable Dittie composed upon the death of/ Robert Lord Devereux late Earle of Essex, who was beheaded in the/ Tower of London, upon Ashwednesday in the morning [Huntington Britwell 18290]
7 THE/ Sale of Esau's Birth-right;/ OR,/ The New Buckingham Ballad [Crawford 3537]
9 A Lamentable Ballad of the Ladies Fall [Roxburghe 3.148-49]
10 The Norfolke Gentleman his last Will and Testament [Roxburghe 1.284-85]
11 THE/ Rare Vertue of an Orange;/ Or, Popery purged and expelled out of the Nation [Pepys 2.259]
12 The True LOYALIST/; OR,/ The Obedient SUBJECT,/ A Loyal SONG [Pepys 2.223]
13 The rarest Ballad that ever was seen,/ Of the Blind beggers daughter of Bednall-green [Euing 293]
14 A Godly Warning for all Maidens, by the exam/ple of Gods Judgement shewed on one Jermans Wife of Clifton [Pepys 1.504-05]
15 The Lamentable and Tragicall History of Titus An-/dronicus [Folger L252a]
16 The Lamenting Ladies last farewel to the/ WORLD [Euing 183]
17 The Merchants Daughter of Bristow [Euing 210]
19 A Pleasant Ballad of Tobias, wherein is shewed/ what wonderful things chanced to him in his Youth [Euing 270]
20 A sweet Sonnet, wherein the Lover exclaimeth against/ Fortune for the loss of his Ladies favour [Pepys 1.512-13]
21 A True Relation of the Life and Death of/ Sir Andrew Barton, a Pyrate and Rover on the Seas [Pepys 1.484-85]
23 The Countrey FARMER:/ OR, THE/ Buxome VIRGIN [Roxburghe 2.77]
24 An Excellent Ballad, intituled, The Constancy of/ Susanna [Bodleian Douce 1 (30a)]
25 A most notable example of an ungracious Son, who/ in the pride of his heart denyed his own Father [Roxburghe 1.226-27]
26 The Whig Rampant:/OR, EXALTATION [Euing 389]

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